Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert

Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert (2025) is a novel by Bob the Drag Queen, an African American activist, comedian, actor, television personality, and winner of the eighth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. A genre-bending work of historical and speculative fiction, the novel imagines a world in which Harriet Tubman has returned from the dead along with an entourage of formerly enslaved men and women, with the goal of producing a Hip-Hop album. Helped along the way by embattled producer Darnell, Tubman and her band, the Freemans, craft a set of songs that are both rooted in historical experience and meant to strike a chord with contemporary listeners. Although Tubman has enlisted Darnell’s assistance to get her message across, she becomes a powerful force for change in his life as well, setting him “free” from the limiting beliefs that have long kept happiness just out of reach.

Exploring themes related to The Erasure of Black History, Hip-Hop and the Power of Storytelling, and The Multi-Faceted Nature of Black American Identity, Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert was an instant New York Times bestseller and has been critically praised for its contributions to African American literature.

This guide uses the 2025 hardcover edition by Gallery Books. 

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of enslavement, racism, and sexual violence.

Language Note: Darnell, the novel’s protagonist, identifies as both gay and “queer,” and this guide makes use of both terms. Once considered a slur, the term queer has in recent years been reclaimed as a political identity by individuals on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Although its definition can be fluid, the author’s use of the term to describe Darnell encompasses more than sexual orientation. It denotes an identity that exists in defiance of traditional norms, resists easy-to-read labels, and challenges hetero-normative standards and culture. Darnell has never felt accepted in any group, be it racial, national, or historical. Using the term queer allows him to feel pride in an identity that doesn’t fit neatly into any one particular box.

Plot Summary

Part 1 begins as Darnell waits in a music studio for Harriet Tubman and her band. She is one of many historical figures who has “returned” from the dead as of late, and she is the one about whom he is the most excited. Harriet wants to enlist Darnell’s help in producing an album, and he is both nervous and exhilarated. Darnell is a music producer whose career never fully recovered after he was outed as a gay man on a prominent television show, and he welcomes the chance to both work with such a legend and get back into the game.

Harriet introduces him to her band: There is her brother Moses, Buck, Odessa, and DJ Quakes. After speaking with everyone about their histories and their hopes for the album, Darnell asks Harriet and the band to perform a few verses of the song they have been working on. What he hears blows him away, and his excitement for the project mounts.

As they continue to work on the album, Darnell has the opportunity to get to know each of the band’s members. Odessa, also a formerly enslaved woman, worked in a plantation house rather than in the fields. She dispels his notions that this made for an easier life, noting how backbreaking her labor was and how difficult it was to work under the threat of violence and sexual assault from the enslavers in the household. He learns that DJ Quakes is a Quaker and former abolitionist with a complicated relationship to organized religion. Harriet is a devout Christian, and Darnell worries that his own antipathy towards Christianity will become a point of contention between them. Buck, too, has little respect for “Harriet’s God.” He views Christianity as a tool used by enslavers to keep the enslaved oppressed, and in his criticism, Darnell sees many of his own long-held views reflected.

Harriet and Moses speak further about life along the Underground Railroad and on the abolitionist circuit, and Darnell is struck by how much important African American history has been omitted from history books and history classes. He is also increasingly sure that, in spite of the fact that he, Harriet, and her band are all African Americans who share history, he cannot, as a 21st-century man, truly understand what life was like for enslaved people.

He asks to take a trip down South to Harriet’s birthplace, and the group piles into a rented van together. The journey provides more opportunities for conversation and reflection, and Darnell continues to be moved by the group’s struggles and by the complexity of African American history and Black identity in America.

Harriet, who is more keenly observant than anyone Darnell has ever met, has also picked up on Darnell’s unhappiness. Using the metaphor of freedom, she tells him that it is her intention to help him break the chains of his past and finally embrace his identity, whatever that might be. Buck, too, is observant, and he intuits a fact that Darnell has long tried to keep hidden: He is gay and is uncomfortable speaking publicly about his sexuality. Terrified that Buck will tell the rest of the group, Darnell begs him to keep his secret.

Part 2 flashes back to the career-ending incident that Darnell has long struggled with and the source of the pain that Harriet sensed. A prominent rapper, Dr. Slim, hired him to produce a song. Unbeknownst to Darnell, Slim was a closeted gay man who knew that Darnell was also gay. After a night of heavy drinking, Slim tearfully admitted to Darnell that he was gay and asked for confirmation that Darnell was too. The next morning, Slim suggested they come out together on live television. Darnell warily agreed to the plan, but was not entirely surprised when Slim outed Darnell while claiming to be straight himself. Darnell’s career stalled, but Slim’s continued on its upward trajectory.

Part 3 returns to the present, and Darnell learns that Slim is now openly married to another man and that he owns the record company that signed Harriet. Harriet continues to do her best to help Darnell, and Darnell opens up to her and the group about his sexuality. No one is surprised, and no one is judgmental. Darnell finally feels as though there might be room for him to be both gay and Black in America, and he begins to let go of some of the emotional pain he has long carried with him.

Slim approaches Darnell, hoping to clear the air on a podcast about having outed him years ago, as a clip has surfaced and gone viral, but Darnell refuses. He can now understand how difficult life had been for Slim in the hyper-masculine, conformist world of Hip-Hop in the early 2000s, but he has no desire to help ease Slim’s guilt or help his career. With Harriet’s support, he declines.

Harriet, Darnell, and the band work furiously on the album. There are moments of creative epiphany, periods of writer’s block, and many meaningful conversations. Ultimately, they produce an album that everyone is proud of. Harriet and the band perform the album live at the Apollo on Juneteenth to widespread acclaim. Darnell is saddened to have finished the project but is happy that he helped Harriet get her message out and grateful for everything that she has done for him.